Book Projects

Greetings Apples,

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have a relatively large number of GATE students in my classroom this year. One of the "extras" I have available in my class for these students (and any other motivated students looking for something different to do when their classwork is done) is a binder filled with book projects.

Book projects are various independent study projects that a student can do to illustrate a particular book he or she read and loved. When I began teaching, I was given a huge library of teacher materials that I had no time to read through and process at the time. I dedicated a chunk of time this past summer going through these materials and marking the things that were useful to me. One common theme I began marking were these reading projects. I ended up creating a binder of book project choices from which kids could choose something that interests them. The projects are totally optional and are completely driven by the student - they select the project, the book to use, and write out a rough draft for me. Once I approve the rough draft to see they are serious about completing the project, I give them whatever supplies they need to complete it.

Here are the word documents for the project options in the binder: https://docs.google.com/folder/d/0BwdTV-aIHkLpcUxHRW9RckZpMTQ/edit?usp=sharing

Below are some student samples of book projects. These book projects were created by my GATE students after finishing reading From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler for our book club.

"Story Quilt"

"Advertisement Poster"

"Design a Board Game"

"Diorama"

Below are a few more student samples. The first is the "A New Cereal on the Shelf" project a student opted to do while our class was reading Island of the Blue Dolphins. The second two cereal boxes were book projects two students opted to do after finishing independent reading books they both enjoyed.

"Dilly Dally Dolphins" designed for Island of the Blue Dolphins

"Magic Candy Flakes" designed for The Candy Shop War

"Owl Treats' designed for Guardians of Ga'Hoole: The Capture

If you have something similar in your classroom, let me know about it! I'd love to expand my project selection. If you start trying book projects in your classroom, let me know what are your class' favorites! (Our most popular are "A New Cereal on the Shelf" and "Design a Game.")

Miss H.

Feel Good File

Greetings Apples,

When you are a student teacher, you are absorbing as much information as possible about everything you need to run your own classroom. But there are little things that cannot be taught or fully understood until you actually are solely responsible for your own classroom.  One of my master teachers along the way taught me to keep a "Feel Good File" to reflect on after those tough teaching days.

So often, when dealing with children, parents, colleagues, and administrators, it is easy to hear about what you are doing wrong, rather than what you are doing right. If you allow yourself to wallow in the negative for too long, it can be really emotionally draining.

My master teacher, Mrs. M, told me that she has a file folder where she tucks away positive notes, kind thoughts and uplifting emails she has received from parents and kids along the way. Then, on a particularly rough day, she can pull out the "Feel Good File" and immerse herself in the good to shake off the bad. I didn't totally understand the need at first, but regardless, I began to hang on to the sweet notes and pictures I was receiving from families in my classroom.

Now … I totally get it! I won't always be able to make everyone happy with the way I run my classroom, but if I ever feel like I am wallowing too much in the negative, I can pull out my "Feel Good File" and remember all of the good things I've done and all of the positive, supportive families I've been fortunate enough to have in my classroom along the way.

Do you do anything to ward off the bad day blues?

Miss H.

My Students Need Your Help!

Greetings Apples,

I was so inspired by the incredible educators at the CUE conference and what they are doing with technology in their classrooms, that I sat down the first night and wrote my first project proposal for DonorsChoose.org.

For those of you unfamiliar, DonorsChoose.org is "an online charity that makes it easy for anyone to help students in need.  Public school teachers from every corner of America post classroom project requests on our site, and you can give any amount to the project that most inspires you.  When a project reaches its funding goal, we ship the materials to the school.  You'll get photos of the project taking place, a letter from the teacher, and insight into how every dollar was spent.  Give over $50 and you'll also receive hand-written thank-yous from the students."

I am asking for donations of any size (even $1) to help my kids.  For the next week, any donation you make to my project will be doubled!  If you know anyone who is passionate about education, please pass this along.  Your donation will brighten my students' school year (and many new students' for many years to come!), and you'll get photos and thank yous from our class.

Here is my classroom request: Excited Explorers Seeking iPads

To have your donation matched dollar for dollar, enter the match code INSPIRE on the payment screen. This awesome match offer lasts through March 24, 2013.

My students and I greatly appreciate your support,

Miss H.

The Home Stretch

Greetings Apples,

I realized I haven't talked much lately about what's going on with graduate school. I'm nearing the end, which is both very exciting and incredibly overwhelming, as many things are due in a very short period of time. (Whenever I feel completely stressed trying to balance my responsibilities at work and my deadlines at school, I check my district's salary schedule to peek at my pay increase next year!) I have a little more than half of my thesis done, and I am slated to walk in the commencement ceremony on May 17th.

As I am preparing to participate in my school's commencement ceremony, I have been reading a lot about the various traditions depending on the degree being earned. It is all very interesting, and I had no idea there were so many variations of caps and gowns, as well as what they all stood for.

Here is how my university explains the clothing traditions:

Significance of Hooding
The history of academic dress reaches far back into the early days of the oldest universities.  Gowns were worn for warmth in unheated buildings frequented by medieval scholars.  The most outstanding feature of all academic costume, the hood, originally seems to have had three uses: as a head covering, as a shoulder cape, or, when hanging from the shoulder, as a bag in which alms could be collected or provisions carried.

In institutions of higher learning, the gown is generally black in color.  The style of the sleeves denotes the various degrees: the bachelor's degree is signified by full-length pointed sleeves; the sleeves of the master's degree are oblong in shape and extend well below the knee, the arm coming through an opening at the elbow; and the gown of the doctoral degree has bell-shaped sleeves that may be worn open or closed.  The gown worn by one retaining a doctorate is additionally distinctive by facing down front with velvet of the color characteristic of the subject to which the degree pertains; three bars of the same material are found on the sleeve of the gown.

I have a meeting on Tuesday to order my master's hood (light blue in color to signify a Masters in Education) and tassel. A friend of mine who graduated from the same university last year was kind enough to loan me her cap and gown so that I didn't have to spend money on something I would only wear for about two hours. (Thanks, Amanda!)

There is a light at the end of the tunnel, Apples!

Miss H.

CUE Conference: Day 2 Highlights

Greetings Apples,

My brain is on overload right now, so I am just going to give you a list of great (and mostly free!) websites I learned about today. Some of these are well-known, but others I hadn't heard of yet.

Edmodo - classroom social media site / classroom website
Khan Academy - academic tutorials
Education Place - e-manipulatives, games, glossary, and graphic organizers
Sync.In - student collaboration tool
Quizlet - interactive flashcards
Study Jams - short, interactive video lessons on a variety of topics
A Maths Dictionary for Kids - an animated, interactive online math dictionary
Apperson Prep on YouTube - educational math videos (in the same vein as BrainPOP, Max and Morty teach you math.)
Math Train - same idea as the Khan Academy videos, but they are student-created by kids at a school in Santa Monica.
Math TV - math tutorial videos
That Quiz - math test activities

We also watched some great stuff about how to teach keyboarding to elementary school students to prepare them for the Common Core shift. That presenter recommended Micro Type as a tool for effectively teaching keyboarding.

I also saw another great 6th grade teacher from SDUSD present about incorporating technology into her math class. She had the brilliant idea to use Google Earth for teaching geometry, area and perimeter. Her students located their school on the app, studied it from a bird's eye view, outlined geometric shapes they observed, and used the ruler in the Google Earth app to measure the sides of buildings to figure perimeter and area.

Enjoy!
Miss H.

CUE Conference: Day 1 Highlights

Greetings Apples,

Last summer I attended ISTE in San Diego, an international technology conference. I don't know if it was that the conference was so big that I was overwhelmed or that I just didn't pick the right seminars to see, but I didn't come away from the three days feeling like I hadn't learned very much that was practical and exciting to me.

I just spent five hours at the CUE Conference, and I feel like doing cartwheels. My brain is buzzing with all of these great new tools and ideas to take back into my classroom. I feel so instantly inspired being around all of these incredible, creative educators.

Here are some of the best things I took away from today:

Virtual Field Trips with Google Earth

I started the morning in a seminar taught by a 6th grade SDUSD social studies teacher where she whet our educational appetites with a taste of Google Earth. She engages her class by extending the meager social studies textbook with virtual field trips. She showed us how her class has visited Ancient Greece, the Great Wall of China, and the inside of the Great Pyramid of Giza through Google. The program allows her, as an educator, to link text, video and images to the virtual tour to bring the social studies textbook to life. She has also used the program to involve her students in teaching the standards. After a tutorial of how to use the program, she has her students work in cooperative groups to design virtual tours for their classmates on an assigned topic.

Think of the possibilities! A primary grade teacher in the seminar suggested using it to give her students  a visual representation of the difference between a city, state, country and continent. A science teacher shared that she and her class use it to check tectonic plates for recent earthquakes and to track movement along fault lines. Google has mapped out the Titanic! I can use it to take a virtual tour of the California missions when my students are writing their reports. We can "visit" San Nicholas Island when we are reading Island of the Blue Dolphins. My fifth grade colleague in the seminar with me searched the site and already found a pre-made virtual tour of the Liberty Bell for her class.

I could feel myself smiling like an idiot throughout her presentation. As soon as I finish this post, I will be playing on Google Earth until my coworkers drag me out to dinner.

Edmodo

I've heard of Edmoto before, but hadn't really had the time or inclination to learn more about it on my own. I met an Edmoto representative in the convention center vendor area and was quickly sucked in. In a nutshell, Edmoto is a social media website build for schools and teachers. A teacher can create a class page where he or she can post discussion questions, quizzes, videos, and more. Students are assigned their own user names and can respond to discussions, answer questions and pose new questions to each other. It's basically an amped-up wiki space that seems to be very user friendly.

Mathological Liar

I think all teachers are suckers for school supplies and classroom products.  Naturally, inside the convention center they had a big vendor faire set up pushing teacher "crack" (curriculum books, flashcards, games, manipulatives, etc.). We found this awesome game called Mathological Liar (2-4 players). Each student gets a "case file" card with a math "whodunit" word problem on it. Each card has the same problem on the front, but on the back of the individual cards are suspect names and clues. Each student reads their suspect clue on the back of the card aloud, and by using the clues given in the case file and the suspect clues, students try to figure out which suspect committed the mathematical crime. 

Well, all in all, I had a very productive first day. With all of the work stress and school stress I've been under lately, this conference was just what (I didn't know) I needed to reenergize me in the classroom. 

I'll be back tomorrow with more technology goodies!

Miss H.

Tech Time

Greetings Apples,

I am blogging to you from sunny Palm Springs, California where the annual CUE Conference is taking place.  I am a huge technology fan, and I am thrilled to be attending my second technology conference where I can be a sponge and soak up ideas from technology leaders around the country.

I'll be here until Saturday, and I have a busy schedule to get in all of the sessions and workshops I am interested in.  Some of the classes I will be attending (or attempting to attend based on crowds):

• Technology in the Common Core Classroom
• Digital Tools for the ELA Common Core
• Technology for Planning and Teaching CCSS
• Write Here, Write Now: Developing Young Writers
• Bringing Technology into Your Math Class

...as well as informational sessions (called CUE-Tips - cute, right?) on Moodle, Common Core Keyboarding, and Edmoto and the 21st Classroom.

I'll be trying to keep up with my blog each day to give you the best of what I am learning. If you're looking for any specific ideas, websites or tools, post me a comment  below, and I'll keep my eyes peeled for you.

Miss H.

Interactive Notes

Greetings Apples,

Every year I try to introduce my students to note-taking through our science curriculum. This year I tried to "spice" it up by introducing interactive note-taking. For each chapter's vocabulary, we create a flipbook in our notes. For our Rocks and Minerals unit, I decided to create an interactive chart to help the students learn the rock cycle.

Here's the final product:

The cover

We color-coded each arrow to represent the different processes of the rock cycle.

Underneath each flap is a note about the type of rock and inside each arrow is the name of the process. 

The flaps help the kids study by hiding the information until they are ready to check their answers. The novelty of the flaps makes note-taking and studying seem fun for the kids, so it's a win-win! Once our Rock Cycle chart was complete, we glued them into our Science Journals to keep with all of our other notes.

Interested in trying out interactive notes in your classroom? Here are some great resources that got me started:

Ideas for Prefixes and Suffixes

Math flipbooks here and here

The Scientific Method

General flipbook shapes

and a great book I purchased with a lot of reproducibles and a CD-rom to print templates...

Enjoy!

Miss H.